Saturday, 26 May 2018

Are Renewables Value for Money

We have heard so much over the past 10 years or more about been Green, Sustainable Energy, Renewable Energy etc, etc, so why has it not taken off.

Even with Government Grants RHI and FiT (Bribes in my opinion) the uptake has not been great, why is this? Well in my opinion its simply, people can see that these overpriced, expensive components are never going to repay the capital cost in savings during their lifetime, we see all this info saying payback in 10 years, 5 years, 3 years or whatever, what is this based on, its based on theoretical data, not real life, houses are different, each home has a different heatloss, peoples personal comfort levels are different, there is no standard in personal comfort levels, so much of it will depend on personal use, theories and guessing don't work in the real world.

The uptake from installers to the likes of MCS were dreadful, why was this, again cost and also bureaucracy, it seemed that constant hoops had to be jumped through and much silver had to cross palms to belong to MCS, but renewables was likely to be a tiny percentage proportion of a plumbing and heating business, so the costs and time needed to comply with the schemes requirements were simply not worth it to the majority of sole traders and SME's, but without these groups on board it was always going to fail, if they can't get installers on board to beat the drum of renewables, what chance do they have with the public

When we look at the reality of renewables, what would anyone do when faced with the following options, a GSHP installation costs between £13,000.00-£20,000.00 or a gas boiler install £2,000.00-£3,000.00 its a no brainer, the GSHP is not going to save you so much in energy costs that its worth the extra £10,000.00 capital outlay and why should GSHP's, solar, biomass get grants, nothing is free, we are all paying for these grants, but in my opinion, the returns are simply not viable.

If renewable options are good, why has the new build market not embraced them, why do we not see solar on every new build, why do we not see ASHP's or GSHP's been installed on every new build, again, its the costs, bureaucracy and the lack of demand for these technologies from the public.

While on the subject, why is Biomass treated as a renewable, or sustainable, in my opinion it is a dirty fuel, why is it seen as green to grow trees then tear them down to burn as fuel, yet coal mining and burning is seen as bad, where is the difference, both are bad for the environment and burning both are bad for air quality, so why is one praised as been good.

I understand that we do need to find cleaner ways to heat our homes, I just do not think the current options are the real solution, we do need to find solutions, but to be successful the costs needs to be reasonable so that ordinary people can afford them and installers are free to install them without putting up barriers, to prevent uptake